


One String of Fairy Lights

by greygerbil



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28073277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Mycroft is not a fan of Christmas, but Greg has his ways of making things palatable to him.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	One String of Fairy Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Galadriel1010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/gifts).



“ _You_ are free to do whatever you want on Christmas. As for me, I will be at work, since world politics and international crime don’t stop for roast beef and pudding.”

Mycroft made a show out of opening his newspaper, giving Greg a sharp smile over the top of it.

“So like any other day, then?” Greg asked.

“Yes, why not? I’m not Christian and neither are you.”

Greg grabbed a plate out of the dishwasher and placed it in the cupboard.

“Well, it’s still tradition for me. I grew up with it.”

“Didn’t you use to celebrate with your ex-wife’s family?” Mycroft asked, not raising his eyes from the newspaper.

Greg was pretty sure he actually did occasionally read while talking rather than just trying to appear nonchalant; he had well enough mental capacity to do both at once.

“Yeah, since my mother died twelve years ago.” He was an only child by a single mother with no remaining family of her own, so there hadn’t been anyone on his side left to visit. “Why?”

“Considering you said your ex-wife’s family never liked you, one would imagine you would have built up an aversion by association to all this ‘tradition’ eventually.”

Greg shrugged his shoulders as he grabbed a towel to rub some leftover drops of water from an expensive-looking whiskey glass Mycroft had gotten out for a foreign dignitary of some sort last night. The woman had been followed by two towering men wearing sunglasses and barely concealing their pistols under their jackets. Greg hadn’t asked and just kept out of the way to watch TV upstairs.

“I wouldn’t willingly sign up for that again, but it doesn’t make the holidays less fun on their own.”

“Yet on their own, the holidays are just perfectly ordinary days. The meaning is superimposed.”

Greg rolled his eyes.

“Okay, you’re right.”

“A foregone conclusion.”

Greg assumed Mycroft thought this got him off the hook for Christmas, but really, all he’d done was gotten Greg thinking as he placed the rest of the dishes back into Mycroft’s cupboards. Yes, the holidays were only what you made of them, so Greg wouldn’t let Mycroft’s grouching stop him, either – and perhaps he’d even get him to join in.

-

Greg let the topic lie for a bit. He knew by now that one of the few things that Mycroft was faster to believe than he should was that he’d beaten Greg in an argument – Sherlock was the same way, so Greg had ample experience using this to his advantage.

On the evening of the Saturday before the week of Christmas, Mycroft was getting dressed for a meeting with some other ‘minor government officials’ while Greg perched on the shoe cabinet in the narrow hallway in an effort to soak up all the precious few moments they got together today.

“I know you don’t do Christmas, but would you mind if I got us a small tree? I’d like to have one to look at,” he mentioned, when the conversation had come to a brief stop.

Mycroft frowned.

“Why don’t you put it up in your flat?”

“What, so the expired food in my fridge has company?”

He hadn’t slept at his place in three months, he didn’t think.

As Mycroft adjusted his scarf, he gave a small huff of breath.

“Point taken. Well, I don’t see why not. You will have to make sure needles don’t get everywhere, though.”

“Of course. I’m going to drop by my place and get some of my grandmother’s decorations, too. She had those really pretty handmade blue baubles. According to my mum, she got them from a suitor.” He chuckled. “Also, there’s the ugliest porcelain angel you’ve ever seen, need that one, too.”

“And that has to be in my house?”

“Yes. I got it for Secret Santa in my first year over at the Yard. Kind of a mascot, you know.” Greg raised a brow. “It’s not even going to be an eye-catcher here, though. I feel the actual suits of armour overshadow everything else you can do for decorations.”

“Careful, Greg. They were here before you.”

Greg laughed. “You still have to tell me their story. You said there was one.”

Greg got to his feet as Mycroft closed the last button on his dark grey greatcoat and waited for Mycroft to turn to him and kiss him.

“Several. If you are eager for stories, I guess I have to come back early tonight,” Mycroft mused, his hand briefly ghosting over Greg’s side.

“Definitely.”

-

Greg put a small tree up in the sitting room – since this house did actually have a sitting room like they were in a Jane Austen novel or something – and Greg added his grandmother’s decorations and placed the angel on the windowsill next to the tree. He didn’t hang out in that room very much, be he liked seeing the tree through the open door when he passed by. Mycroft’s house, like the man, was very imposing and though Greg had his own toothbrush in the bathroom and his clothes in the wardrobe, he had never quite figured out how to leave his mark on anything here or whether he was allowed to do so in the first place. The best view was seeing Mycroft sit in the armchair next to the tree reading or working on his laptop, though. In the last couple of days, he’d seemed to have started to prefer that spot to his office. It probably was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the tree, but sometimes, Greg let himself believe that Mycroft saw the same in it that he himself did, a small sign that Greg was here to stay.

The next step to creating Christmas were biscuits, of course. Greg had always been in charge of the kitchen, so he had a few recipes down that he could squeeze in after work: basic ginger and sugar biscuits as well as shortbread and, for a little flourish, chocolate fudge crinkle biscuits. When Mycroft strolled into the kitchen past eleven at night, Greg was wiping flour off the counters and the last batch was in the oven.

“What bomb exploded here?” Mycroft asked primly, looking at the mess of dirty dishes and empty ingredient wrappings.

Greg grinned, shaking out his rag over the sink.

“Whatever, I’m taking care of it.”

Mycroft turned his head to take in the spread of biscuits that covered the entire kitchen table, where Greg had put them to cool off. Mycroft resisted for a moment, but apparently the combination of their availability and the sweet smell wafting through the kitchen broke him down. He picked up one of the biscuits.

“This is another reason Christmas is a bad idea,” he said after taking a bite.

“Is it that bad?”

“It isn’t,” Mycroft said, after popping the other half into his mouth, “and you brought them upon my house now.”

Greg rinsed his hands under the tap and laughed. “It’s Christmas,” he said. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s normal to have a few sweets in the house. You wouldn’t look bad with another pound or five, anyway.” He shrugged. “I mean, I can take them all to work if it really bothers you. Was planning to bring most of them there anyway.”

“You can leave _some_ here. Would be a waste not to have a few left for yourself,” Mycroft said with deliberate disinterest.

Greg chuckled. “Makes sense,” he said good-naturedly.

-

“You don’t have any time off during the holidays?”

“Does that really surprise you at this point?”

Greg looked over at Mycroft lying in bed next to him with his tablet in hand.

“I don’t mean _because_ of the holidays,” he clarified, and though he had been pushing to get a little Christmas into this home, that was true. “You haven’t had a real day off since, what was it, August?”

“The things that need doing keep coming. I don’t have a regular office job. You know what that’s like.”

“Yeah, I get that. I just worry that you’re taking on a little more than is healthy. Your mind may be like a supercomputer, but it’s housed in a human body.”

“I’ll notice if it’s too much.”

Greg had expected that answer. He didn’t doubt Mycroft would notice; he just didn’t believe he’d listen to the signs. For that reason, he’d kept his most powerful ammo for the last shot.

“Besides, I’d love to have a little time with you that isn’t bracketed by you having to run to some meeting or another,” Greg added.

Mycroft looked at him from the corner of his eyes, then back at the tablet. “I do admit it’s been a very long while since I had to consider making room for someone in my schedule,” he said slowly. “Don’t take that to mean I don’t want to. It’s just that you have adjusted yourself perhaps too well around me.”

Greg nudged his head against Mycroft’s shoulder. “I can start complaining more,” he joked.

Mycroft raised a brow as he scrolled through his schedule. “I think could free up the 24th, unless something explodes spontaneously,” he said. “You have that day off.”

“Yes,” Greg said, brightening.

Mycroft looked pleased for a moment as he saw the no doubt obvious joy on Greg’s face.

-

“So we are doing Christmas now, aren’t we?”

Greg wriggled his feet in Mycroft’s lap. From the kitchen came the smell of turkey and roast potatoes and he’d have to get up to check on both in a bit, but for now he laid spread out across the sofa by the Christmas tree. A bowl of the biscuits he’d made stood on a low table close-by and he reached out to grab one and hand it to Mycroft.

“It’s not Christmas yet,” he said innocently.

“They do celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve in Germany, for example,” Mycroft answered before putting the biscuit in his mouth.

“Alright, but I didn’t even know that, so this is hardly a sneaky German Christmas I planned.” Greg grinned. “Is spending time with me so bad? I can throw out the food and make frozen pizza if that makes you feel better.”

He’d really enjoyed sleeping in with Mycroft for once, then eating breakfast around midday because they’d gotten distracted doing other things in bed and enjoying them thoroughly, unhurried and well-rested for once. Maybe it was a bit of a premature Christmas, but it had felt like Christmas, anyway, to spend time ambling around the house with his lover and staying in each other’s presence, the TV running on mute showing pictures of the streets full with last-minute shoppers and the tree lit up with a single string of fairly lights Greg had found in an old box in his apartment.

“I don’t know,” Mycroft said archly. “I am having fun, but I feel like I was cajoled into this situation. An interrogation may be necessary.”

“Don’t go too easy on me,” Greg said, smirking, and nudged his arm with his toe. “But you know, I didn’t even get you a gift, since you never want anything, so this really isn’t doing Christmas at all. Case closed.”

“You bought the ingredients for a quite complicated and rather expensive dinner and you are making it,” Mycroft said, catching his ankle.

“That doesn’t count! I’m also going to eat with you.”

Mycroft made a doubtful noise at that argument, setting Greg’s foot back in his lap.

“About Christmas,” he said, after a brief moment of hesitation, “are you free tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yeah, sure. Wanted to check in with some friends, but that’s at night. Why?”

“My parents have now apparently gotten into the unfortunate habit of calling us home for Christmas and it would only make sense to take you along.”

Greg stared at him, stopping the gently playful press of his feet against Mycroft’s hands. “You’re going to introduce me to your parents?”

“That doesn’t seem too hasty after nine months of dating, in my opinion. Besides, Sherlock and me make terrible conversationalists during family gatherings. My parents will be grateful.” He stopped himself, in a manner that told Greg he’d had other arguments, but had realised that this was not a matter that someone could be talked into with logic alone. “It’s your decision, of course.”

There was a hint of doubt in that last bit, as if Mycroft was not wholly sure that Greg would agree to this. That was a rare thing from him.

“No, you’re right. I’d love to come.”

“Be aware you’re the first partner I ever brought home. I’m assuming my parents will be a little overexcited,” Mycroft said dryly.

Greg nodded his head. His heart was stuck in his throat right now, making it difficult to speak. He managed to hide the fact by sitting up and straddling Mycroft’s lap to kiss him. Mycroft might not be enthusiastic about the holiday, but it felt like he’d gotten Greg a great Christmas present, after all.


End file.
